


One Stone

by Xparrot



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Angst, Carter POV, Drama, Gen, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Present Tense, Presumed Dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-02
Updated: 2013-04-02
Packaged: 2017-12-07 07:47:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/746055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xparrot/pseuds/Xparrot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carter knows she cares too much, she's been told so by every commanding officer she's ever had; and that caring keeps her sharp but also puts her in danger of burning out.  So once in a while she takes a moment to breathe, to remember who she is when she doesn't have on a badge.</p><p>So she doesn't feel guilty about it, when Fusco calls and says, "Carter, sorry, know it's your day off, but I think we're going to need you down here--"</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Stone

**Author's Note:**

> Unashamedly self-indulgent. This is the episode I want to watch, dang it!

_"It's my day off,"_ Carter had said that morning. She hadn't had her phone on at the time, but why waste the minutes? Finch would be listening anyway.

Whether he would recognize it, now, was another question; but he didn't call and Reese didn't drop by all day. Instead Carter enjoyed brunch with Taylor, before he went off to spend his last precious days of summer doing more interesting things than hanging out with his mom; and she was able to clean and shop and hit the gym and still have a couple hours to waste on a hilariously terrible "true crime" novel.

It's been a good day, one of the most relaxing she's had in ages, and she's not going to feel guilty about it. She's _not_. She's seen what happens to people who let their jobs consume them—whether they're cops or soldiers or teachers or bankers or crazy ex-CIA vigilantes. Carter knows she cares too much, she's been told so by every commanding officer she's ever had; and that caring keeps her sharp but also puts her in danger of burning out. Which she can't; she's got too much to do. So once in a (too long) while she takes a moment to breathe, to help herself instead of others, to remember who she is when she doesn't have on a badge.

(And if she smiles wryly at every action-suspense potboiler she can't help but pick up in the grocery check-out line— _who are you fooling, Joss?—_ well, badge or not, she is who she is; can't change that.)

So she doesn't feel guilty about it, when Fusco calls and says, "Carter, sorry, know it's your day off, but I think we're going to need you down here—" but she doesn't take the spare second to find a bookmark before she drops the paperback and heads for her car.

 

* * *

 

Two blocks from the jewelry store Fusco gave her the address of, there's a muffled _thud_ that rattles the car windows, jars her teeth to the roots. When Carter sees the black column of smoke winding up between the buildings, she flips on the siren, arrives in time to help set up the emergency cordon. Two black-and-whites are on the scene already and a firetruck is on its way; Fusco must have called in for more back-up. Or else an anonymous tip from one of their mutual friends.

The uniforms are shepherding the people milling in the street, sooty from debris and wide-eyed with fear and confusion, staring at a pile of rubble tall enough to have been a two- or three-story building. "I was walking by and it just...exploded," one man says, in the flat rational tone of someone going into shock; blood drips in his eye from a cut on his brow but he doesn't wipe it away.

The air is choked with dust, settling slowly in the humid summer air, like an early morning fog. Through that cloud Carter can see the shapes of people on the ground, at the edge of the debris—escaped the blast, barely; if they're not passers-by then they must've gotten out just in time before the building blew. As the first ambulance screeches up Carter moves into the dust, stepping carefully, listening for the creaks and cracks that would indicate the ground was destabilized by the blast; but the sidewalk's concrete is holding.

Most of the figures she can make out are moving, slowly, groaning as they push themselves off the ground. One of those groans she recognizes, reaches Fusco as he's struggling to sit up and grips his shoulder, tells him, "Easy there. You hurt anywhere?"

"Whah?" Fusco blinks at her, baffled—pupils even, and he's scratched up elsewhere but his head's not bleeding; that confused look is from his ringing ears, not a concussion.

"Are you injured?" Carter asks again, louder and mouthing the words clearly, and Fusco blinks again, then gives his head a shake.

"No—no, I'm okay," he says, out of breath and stumbling.

"Good," Carter says, hooking a hand under Fusco's elbow to help haul him upright, as she looks around for who else in the vicinity the EMTs haven't reached yet. "Then you can help out—"

"Help—" Fusco wheezes, and grabs onto her arm, tight. "The—Finch—" He gropes at his torn-up jacket.

"So they were here," Carter says, not even sighing because eventually resignation gets exhausting and you have to just accept. "Please don't tell me John blew this place up—"

"—Not him," Fusco gasps out. He manages to extract his phone from his pocket; the screen's cracked but still comes on, and he fumblingly auto-dials.

The faint beeps of a ringtone answers, but it's not through his phone's speaker; it's off in the dust, in the shadowy piles of broken brick and twisted metal that used to be a building.

"He was inside," Fusco says, "clearing everyone out—told him to get the hell out but he had to be sure—should've been me, since he's not—but I was already outside—"

Carter doesn't hear all of it because she's already moving, picking her way through the debris scattered across the sidewalk. There isn't anyone here, just rubble, no person caught in the blast radius.

The soft chime of the ringtone she's following stops, then starts again; Fusco must have redialed. Broken glass crunches like ice under her boots. There's a steel beam thrusting up from the rubble like the prow of a lopsided ship: the doorframe, fallen and twisted by the force of the building's collapse, though the metal's still solid. Not a hot enough blast to melt it, then, and no one's burned. Probably a smaller explosion, localized by a load-bearing wall to bring the building down. 

That's as far as Carter's evaluation gets, before she spots the shape huddled in the shadow of the doorframe's prow and her priorities realign.

His suit today is gray, almost the same gray as the concrete sidewalk, as the settling dust; his face is gray, too. Protective camouflage, like a sparrow hiding in a bush. He's not quite under the beam, sprawled on his side on the edge of the sidewalk; the fallen side of the doorframe missed his head by six inches. Lucky—though maybe not lucky enough, Carter fears. Her hands are steady but her mouth is dry as she drops to a crouch beside him.

But Finch moves when she touches his throat to feel for a pulse, jerks convulsively and his eyes snap open, the same gray as the dust and glassy. "Easy," Carter says, pitching her voice calm but loud enough to carry to his deafened ears, "don't move, you could be injured—"

He blinks like Fusco, squinting to try to focus on her face over him and failing—his glasses are gone and his eyes look wrong without the shield of lenses, too big and red-rimmed with the dust. His lips move, mouth working for a second before his voice comes in, like a movie with mismatched audio; his strange light voice is thready, tenuous, its usual crisp enunciation stuttering, "D-detective Carter?"

"Yeah," Carter says, encouraged to be identified, "it's me, how do you—"

She's cut off by Finch's gasp, as if in pain though it's before he moves, a weak uncoordinated attempt to roll over that she stops with a hand on his shoulder, holding him still. "Stay put," she says. "Where does it hurt? Can you move your legs—"

But Finch for once isn't listening to her at all. His glazed unfocused eyes are peering past her, searching half-blind and desperate. "John," he says, "must—"

"Where's John?" Carter demands. "Was he in the building with you?" She looks up into the rubble piled before them, pulse thumping in her ears—but Fusco said he wasn't—

And Finch isn't looking to the rubble but out past Carter, at the street. "John," he says again, panting with just the effort of getting the words out and yet he's still feebly struggling to sit up, "no phone—have to—to find him—tell him—before it's too—"

"Harold," Carter says, "it's all right—it's gonna be all right, we'll find John," or rather Reese will find them; wherever he is, she knows he'll be here soon. The explosion might've taken down their comms, but that would just mean he'd be coming faster.

Carter can feel Finch shaking, shallow gasps shuddering through him; then he draws one deep breath and stills, meets her eyes as best he can, with his own foggy blurred gaze. His pupils are unevenly dilated and there's blood in his mouth, but somehow he forces his voice steady, each syllable precisely pronounced. "Detective Carter," he says, " _please._ "

Then his dust-gray eyes roll back and he slumps to the pavement.

 

* * *

 

The driver's license in Finch's wallet lists him as Harold Cox. There are business cards, too, but Carter doesn't take the time to read them, assuming they'll be accurate to his supposed identity. She slips the wallet back into his pocket as she helps the EMTs strap his unconscious body onto the stretcher. It'll raise less flags at the hospital if they have a name they can put him under.

As far as they can determine there's no one else under the rubble, and enough emergency personnel have arrived to deal with everyone on the street, so Carter calls over Fusco on the pretext of investigating the disaster. The dust has settled; at the edge of cordon Fusco hustles up, saying, "We're the only detectives on the scene yet and there's already a guy from the city saying it was a gas main, can you believe it—"

"Fusco," Carter interrupts him, "where's John?"

Fusco pulls his sour dealing-with-the-man-in-the-suit face, though it's strained, beneath the dust and bruises. His gaze shifts to the ambulance where they're loading Finch and back to Carter's face. "Where do you think—dealing with the bozos who set this bomb—excuse me, 'gas main'—"

"He's in danger," Carter says. "Or Finch thought he was—can you call him?" Fusco had Finch's current number, and he'd called Carter before the explosion, so he must have been brought in on their latest job. And Reese usually gives them a way to keep in touch when they're working a case together.

But Fusco shakes his head. "No good; his phone got tossed. He's undercover with the punks, pretending to be their wheelman or something—but they're small-time, penny-ante hoods. Even if they made a big mess," and he frowns even more sourly at the pile of rubble with the uniforms starting to pick through it, then shakes his head again. "They're way out of _his_ league; nothing to worry about."

Carter's not comforted. "Even a small-time gangster can pull a trigger. One lucky shot—"

"Last I heard, they weren't onto him," Fusco says. "Hell, if all went according to plan they won't even know anything's gone wrong with their scheme."

"Gone _wrong_?" Carter says disbelievingly, jerking her chin toward what's left of the building.

"The plan was to blow up the place with the employees in it," Fusco says. "Including the co-owner—the other owner wants to collect on the insurance, and collect on his partner's wife, too. His hired goons were watching over the security feeds across town, waiting for the poor shmuck to take his lunch break in back, and then trigger their bomb, make totally sure he would go up with it."

"So how come they triggered it late?"

Fusco smirks, grimly unwilling. "Our four-eyed friend got one over on them. Came in here pretending to be looking for an anniversary gift, and while the clerk was hunting for the perfect necklace he hacked the video feeds and put them on a slowly increasing delay, so it looked like everyone was still inside. Problem was he didn't get much warning, so he only managed to make a five minute window to pull the fire alarm and get everyone out. And he was pretty insistent about it being everybody, wanted to make sure there weren't any stragglers upstairs. I told him to leave it to me, tried to go up myself, but he insisted on me getting people out the door."

Reese is the muscle of the Rescue Rangers, or whatever they call themselves; he's the one routinely putting his body between bullets and their latest victim. Carter knows that Finch has to care, too, to be bankrolling their crazy operation; but it's one thing to put money on the line. Another thing altogether for a limping man to hitch himself up a flight of stairs, towards a bomb instead of away, for the sake of strangers...

She thinks of Finch lying on the sidewalk, dazed and badly hurt—because Reese hadn't been there and Finch wouldn't trust his saving of people to Fusco, even if Fusco was a cop and it was his job. Besides, if Reese had been there he wouldn't have let Finch into the place to begin with; Carter is frankly surprised that he hadn't come back to stop that recklessness.

She's as surprised that Reese isn't here now, that he hasn't taken care of the criminals in a hurry and shown up to check on his partner. Even without a phone, he should've known, in that creepy invasive way of theirs, always aware of what's going on, even before it happens—

Unless. Unless this time Reese hadn't been aware...

An icy finger slides up Carter's spine, for all the muggy summer heat. Unless his phone was out, and all he'd known was what he'd seen on the criminals' video feed..."Did John know?"

"What?" Fusco asks.

"Did John know the plan? That the security cameras were hacked— _did John know_?"

"The hell should I know, you think he'd tell me—what?" Fusco's irritated frown furrows into more serious concern as he stares at her face. "Carter, what—"

 _Tell him, before it's too_ —"Where is he? Where's John now?"

"Don't know—I got his last position before the phone was tossed, but they were on the move. But Carter, it's going to be okay. I told you, these guys are amateurs, no match for him—"

"Yeah," Carter says, because that's the point, isn't it. "It wasn't John he wanted me to protect—" Not John's life, anyway, and damn it, _damn it all_ , every time she thinks they've pushed her as far as she can go, asked as much as they can possibly ask, they have to top it, don't they. Have to entrust her with that much more.

She didn't ask for this, and she's not going to be guilted into this because she has no damn reason to feel guilty; she doesn't owe them anything, neither of them.

 _Detective Carter, please_ —

Damn it all.

"We need to find John," Carter says. "Right now."

 

* * *

 

The NYPD doesn't have the same illegal and/or supernatural resources as Finch and Reese, but they're not exactly helpless. Cross-referencing Reese's last coordinates with traffic cameras nets a suspiciously unlabeled white van. From there it's easy to track the van's license plates across town to the warehouse district, and wouldn't you know it, the last glimpse of the vehicle is half a block from a warehouse with a floor leased to the jewelry store's co-owner. Amateur hour indeed.

 _"You gonna call in SWAT?"_ Fusco asks uneasily over the phone. _"Or want me to meet you? I can be there in fifteen—"_

"No," Carter says as she checks her holster and heads out of the bullpen. "You stay there." Fusco's at the hospital now, ostensibly to interview the bruised and battered witnesses, along with getting himself patched up. And to stay within earshot of the good Mr. Harold Cox, though he's stepping carefully to avoid implying Cox is a material witness in their investigation. "How's he doing?"

 _"Out of surgery,"_ Fusco reports. _"Doc says he's stable but tells me to come back in a couple days if I want to question him, so..."_

"Good," Carter says, getting in her car; no time for relief, but one of the knots in her belly lets go. "I'll be there soon. Hopefully."

Fusco hesitates, might've said something else but he knows her well enough by now. _"Be careful."_

She might be going in alone, but she's not without backup. Carter smiles slightly as she puts the car in gear. "Thanks, Lionel."

_"And Joss—bring him back."_

She realized it serving but still finds it funny, how faith can support as much as burden; how the more is put on her, the more she learns she's able to do. If only because someone has to. "I will."

 

* * *

 

The white van is unsubtly parked right outside the warehouse in question. Carter parks a block away and walks a wide route to skirt the security CCTV. It's easy; she's gotten very good at spotting cameras, these days.

There aren't any guards outside the building. She climbs up the fire escape and pries open a window leading into an empty storage room. The door is ajar and beyond it she can hear voices, a little too distant to identify or distinguish words.

She's nearly to the door when she hears a shriek, high and loud. Carter readies her sidearm and steps close, peers out the cracked door.

The area beyond is also mostly empty, but between the support beams, below a catwalk, she sees a table and chairs and a few figures. None are looking her way. She does a quick count. Three men prone on the ground. One, a guy with curly brown hair, is tied to a chair. And a fifth man stands before him, his back to Carter—tall, black suit, dark hair that glints silver in the late afternoon sun angling through the skylight. 

"Let's try this again," Reese says, his voice even, not much more than a rasping, toneless whisper and yet it carries clearly. "Did you hire these men to do this?" and he points to the laptop sitting open on the table.

The screen is large enough for Carter to make out the video playing in mute black-and-white. It shows the interior of a jewelry shop, elegant glass counters, well-dressed people conversing. At the edge of the camera's frame a man is crossing toward the back of the shop, his limping gait distinctive—

Then the shop and all the people in it are lost in a silent white flash, that fades into shivering grayscale static. 

"What—what do you want?" gasps the man in the chair, twisting and struggling fruitlessly against the ties around his wrists.

The video on the laptop blinks and restarts, showing the shop, the people by the counters.

"I told you what I want," Reese says, utterly calm, courteously patient. "This man," and he swings his leg, casually kicks one of the men on the ground in the stomach. The prone man gives a strangled whine, curls around his gut but doesn't try to crawl away. "He claims you paid his crew to rig the gas main. That you specifically instructed him to trigger the explosive when there were people inside. I want to know: did you?"

On the laptop, the limping man reaches the back of the shop, and then it all goes white again.

"I don't—I don't know what you're talking about!" The man in the chair's voice is catching; his face is shiny, wet with sweat or tears. "I've—I've never seen this guy—"

Reese leans over him, and the man's protests cut off in another sharp, agonized shriek. This time Carter can hear the faint crack of breaking bone that proceeds it.

"You're lying to me," Reese remarks. He turns to look down at the man at his feet. Smiles at him, lips pulled back from his teeth. "Or else he was. And I don't think he would do that—would you, Mike?"

He steps back to give the prone man another kick. Mike groans, " _No_ —no, man, it was him, I got his cellphone number, the keys to the place, I can prove it—"

"Do you want money?" cries the man in the chair. He's still thrashing around; he's going to wrench his arms out of their sockets if he keeps it up. "I can pay you—double their fee. Triple! We can split the take, just name your price—"

Reese turns back to him, moving slowly, as careful as an injured man trying not to reopen a wound, though as evenly smooth as his voice. "You'd give it up so easily? I'm disappointed. If you're going to go so far for money, the least you can do is value it."

The man in the chair stops squirming; he's frozen, staring up at Reese, and whatever he sees in his captor's face mesmerizes like a bird before a snake. On the laptop the video continues its damning loop.

"Your greed got a lot of people killed today," Reese says, and if possible his voice is even quieter, even calmer. "Innocent people. Good people."

"Who _are_ you? Did Jacob hire you? What are you, his bodyguard or private eye or—"

"I'm not an innocent man," Reese says over him. "I'm not a good man. I'm just the man who's going to make sure that you never hurt anyone else ever again. Make sure that your number never comes up again."

He takes a step forward, toward the man in the chair, and Carter doesn't know for sure what he's going to do but she's already let this go too far. She steps out into view, raises her sidearm and shouts, "Police, don't move!"

Reese doesn't twitch, doesn't glance back at her. He knew she was there, she thinks, knew she was watching. Either he didn't think she would stop him, or he didn't care. He raises one hand toward the man in the chair.

"I said," Carter repeats, "don't move, John."

He pauses, but doesn't look back, doesn't lower his hand. "Detective Carter," he says, and he wouldn't have identified her if he didn't think that the others listening wouldn't be around to talk about it later.

"Back away from them," she orders.

Reese doesn't move. It will take a head shot, Carter thinks. Anything else and he'd have time to follow through. He might still have time. She holds the gun level at the back of his skull. "Step back, John. This isn't your job—this isn't your way. The police can take it from here, arrest these men—"

"It's not enough," Reese says, not angrily—no passion or conviction in his voice, no feeling at all, just plain logic. "It's not about punishment. They could escape. Could have lawyers get them off the murder charge. Their numbers would come up again; he wouldn't have changed anything—"

"Attempted murder," Carter says.

Reese still doesn't move, there's not so much as a tensing of the broad shoulders under the black jacket; but somehow the quality of his stillness changes, the difference between a man standing on a battlefield and standing on the edge of a cliff. "Attempted?" he repeats flatly. His other hand flicks out at the laptop. "We were near enough to hear the explosion."

"The video feed was on a delay," Carter says, speaking clearly, making sure every word will be heard unmistaken. "By the time the place blew, everyone was out."

The fingers of Reese's hand fold into a fist. His voice stays painfully level. "Everyone?"

"Everyone," Carter says firmly. "They're all still alive, John. Every person in the shop."

Reese takes a step back from the man tied to the chair, the motion still so dangerously smooth. But when he turns his head back toward Carter the smile is gone, leaving his face blank, the barren mock humanity of a plastic mask.

It takes just about everything Carter's got to meet his eyes, and she's not sure if she's making a mistake to do so, if she should keep watching his hands instead. John's eyes tell her nothing; he only ever shows expression there when he's pretending to be someone else. And this is as close to the real man as ever she's seen, more than she ever wanted to see.

But maybe he'll be able to read the honesty in her own eyes. She holds his gaze, says, "He asked me to find you, John." She hasn't lowered her gun; it's aimed between his eyes now. "He doesn't want you to do this—this isn't what he hired you to do. Or I'd have stopped you a long time ago. Don't make me stop you now. Let me arrest these men. Please."

John looks at her. Carter stares back at him. How can he stand so still? Her back is aching from the tension in her shoulders, holding the gun level; her stomach is roiling and sweat is sliding stickily down the back of her neck under her collar. She can hear her own heartbeat in her ears. She's been in combat before, on battlefields. This isn't like that; there's none of the reckless surety of adrenaline. If she has to pull the trigger now, it will be a deliberate choice, not the unavoidable compulsion of the survival instinct.

She's not sure she could do it. She wonders how anyone sane could—how anyone who did could keep their sanity, afterwards.

Then John slowly raises his hands, puts them behind his head. Eyes locked with hers, he nods once and takes a long step back, away from both the man in the chair and those on the ground. 

Carter lets go a breath like she was punched in the chest, lowers her stiff arms. Her gun is heavy in her hand but she doesn't holster it yet. The first thing she does is stride forward and slam the laptop shut over the false video.

The man in the chair—William McCarver, she remembers belatedly; she can dare give him a name now—is trembling so hard the chair rattles, gasping to cover his sobs. Two of the fingers on his right hand are starting to swell. Carter pulls out her phone, calls in the arrest and requests a squad car and an ambulance.

The three men on the floor are all still breathing, but they won't be going anywhere, and wouldn't try to run even if they still had intact kneecaps. They barely notice her reading their rights, all staring up instead at Reese's silently looming figure.

When she hears the sirens, Carter steps back to Reese's side, though she keeps her eyes on the criminals. 

Reese has a cell phone in his hand—an older model burner phone, nothing as top-line as his usual. Taken off McCarver, Carter guesses. "He's still not answering," he says, his low voice edged with threat that makes Carter's spine prickle.

"He's in the hospital," Carter says. "No phones, and his might be broken anyway—he was out of the building when it blew, but only just."

"Where?" 

"Mercy General, and as soon as the squad car gets here I can give you a lift—" but when she glances back, Reese is already gone.

 

* * *

 

Carter puts on the flashers and takes every shortcut learned from six years on a Manhattan beat, but by the time she makes it to the hospital and finds the right floor, Reese is there talking with Fusco, standing before a door with a patient chart beside it.

"I _told_ you," Fusco is saying, "private room, no windows, no other doors, totally secure—and you better appreciate it because it's on _my_ credit card—"

"We can pay you back," Reese says, mildly, but the amusement playing around his lips makes Fusco gulp, turn to her in relieved escape.

"Carter," he grunts in greeting. Fusco's dust-covered jacket is slung over his arm and his shirt is rumpled and sweat-stained even in the hospital's cool air conditioning. There are bandaids scattered patchwork over his bare arms, but no larger bandages. "So you caught the assholes?"

"They're being booked now," Carter says. "I hear they've all confessed already, on the way to the hospital." She feels Reese tense more than sees it, a crackling in the air like the static charge before a lightning strike. Before it hits she says, "Not here; Beth Israel was closer." She looks back at the door rather than at Reese. "How's our friend doing?"

"The docs want to keep him for observation overnight," Fusco says. "Make sure the concussion doesn't get worse. He's supposed to be asleep until morning at least, no visitors allowed—I had to flash my badge for them to let me stay. They're going to boot you when they see you—try to boot you," he amends, when Reese's gaze shifts to him.

"Then you better make sure they don't see me," Reese says equably. "Don't want to disturb the personnel here; they've all got important work to do."

"Yeah, yeah," Fusco huffs. "Fine, I'll tell the staff you're with us, on protection duty—what's one more charge of impersonating an officer between friends? But they better not notice you sneaking into his room."

"They won't," Reese says.

Fusco snorts, turns to go and then spins around on his heel, jams a finger at Reese's chest, though a safe distance from making contact. "Next time," he says, "next time you guys find yourselves in a situation, call us in _before_ anybody's setting any explosives anywhere, you got it? What's the use of you having assets if you're not going to use us?"

"Why, Lionel," and Reese smiles almost his usual sardonic smile, though its edge is more acute than usual, sharp enough to cut without you even realizing you've been wounded. "I didn't know you cared."

"Care, hell," Fusco says. "It's just easier for us to take of your messes before everything's blown to hell." He shoots a last look at the closed door, takes a breath like he's about to go on ranting, then shakes his head and stomps off down the hall without another comment.

Reese watches him go, but Carter can tell it's only John's eyes which are tracking him; every other honed soldier sense is still focused right here, on that door. Nothing is going to get through it, not without going through Reese first.

So Carter knows what she's risking, when she puts her hand on the door handle; but hell, if she was a genius she'd never have become a cop to begin with. Reese's shoulders under his suit jacket stiffen; he doesn't move his hands, but his right's already near enough to his holster that she knows he could draw and fire before she finished turning the handle.

He doesn't draw, though, lets her open the door and enter, though he's right at her shoulder, crowding her through.

Finch is still gray, stark now instead of camouflaged against the crisp white hospital sheets. The cotton hospital gown looks incongruous on him, in the gray skin it shows, the lax bare arms on top of the sheets—it's wrong, somehow, as if when you stripped Finch you should only find another suit, layers of silk and tweed and tailored wool down to nothing. Stranger still to see his eyes not just behind glasses but closed, unaware. For once he's neither watching nor listening and Carter has no idea what he is, if not that.

She looks back at Reese, to see if any of her own discomfort is visible on his face, but the expression she catches there isn't anxiety but something wholly different. A smile, smaller than the smirks he threatens Fusco with, only the barest upward tilt of the corner of his lips and yet it seems bigger somehow—

His eyes, she realizes, this smile reaches his eyes. Then she blinks and Reese is stepping up beside her before the hospital bed. She glances sidelong up at him, but she's at the wrong angle now to see his face clearly.

There is so much she doesn't know—so much she has a right to know; they owe her, now more than ever. There are so many questions—beyond the obvious, _Who the hell are you? How do you do what you do?_ She knows enough, at least, to wonder if she wants the answers to those at all.

But there are other questions that maybe are even more important. Why _do you do what you do? What makes you think you have the right to invade peoples' lives, to rip open their innermost hearts and expose their darkest secrets, all in the name of saving their lives? Do you know how arrogant that is? Do you understand how cruel it is to strip someone down to their core and expect them to be grateful for it?_

Carter looks at Finch, lying helpless and nearly unrecognizable in the hospital bed; she thinks of Reese in the warehouse, staring at her blank-faced and disbelieving. 

Reese beside her now stands mutely, unmoving. He doesn't reach to take Finch's hand, resting limply on the edge of the bed; nor does he murmur any of the usual comforting things people say to loved ones in the hospital, to reassure themselves as much as those hurt.

Carter wonders if it's because she's here—because they watch but hate to be watched, because they guard their own privacy as zealously as they invade everyone else's. Or maybe they guard it even from one another; maybe it's not for her sake that Reese doesn't reach out, but Reese's own. Or else it's Finch's privacy he's respecting, carefully maintaining the space between them as determinedly as either of them protects the wall that separates them from the rest of humanity.

_Detective Carter, please._

And Reese stands silent now, but in the warehouse he'd raised his hand, and not lowered it until he knew Finch lived.

She remembers Reese down in Texas, searching for Root, searching for Finch, John's calm stretching thinner and thinner and she hadn't been able to tell what was underneath but it scared her. Like it scared her, seeing him today in the warehouse. Though not for herself—if she'd been threatened, holding the gun on him wouldn't have been so hard. He wouldn't have hurt her; danger to her own life wasn't what frightened her. She wonders if Reese realizes it, realizes that his wall has such a chink in it. She wonders if he'd keep coming to her for help, if he did realize it.

Maybe only if he didn't have a choice. Maybe he doesn't have one anyway.

She glances up at John again. Not moving, but his eyes are on Finch. He hasn't forgotten she's here; if she breathes he'll hear it. But he doesn't try to pretend that he cares about anything now but the man in this hospital bed.

_What is he to you?_

_What are you to him?_

In the end Carter only asks, "So you'll be here all night, I'm guessing?"

For a moment she thinks Reese won't deign to answer even that much. But then he says, soft, like he doesn't have to be loud to be sure he'll be heard, "Looks like. Until he wakes up, anyway."

"Even if he wakes up, it's not like you can just take him out of here," Carter says. "He's hurt, you know."

"I know," Reese says, and she might've imagined the dip in his voice, flattening to hide feeling. Maybe irritation at being told the obvious. Maybe something else.

Carter almost tells him, _It wasn't your fault_ , but doesn't. She's not sure if it would be a lie or the truth and doubts either would console. Maybe Finch wouldn't have been in the building if Reese had been there; maybe he would have been anyway. There would've been people in there to save either way.

Maybe if Reese hadn't been there, maybe if Finch hadn't been there, wherever it was that they first met, then none of this would've happened. Maybe Finch would be some software magnate on the cover of _Forbes_ , and Reese would be living in the suburbs with a wife and two kids and a golden retriever.

It's possible, she supposes, the way miracles mean anything's possible; but she can't picture it even when she tries.

And a jewelry shop would've blown up today with a dozen people in it, and the killers probably escaped scot-free.

That shouldn't make it worth it. Not to an honest law-abiding cop. But really, it does.

"I'll wait outside," Carter says. "Run interference for you if the nurses try to check up on him."

Reese nods once in acknowledgment, without looking away from Finch.

"Right," Carter says, and turns toward the door. She's half-expecting Reese to speak up, to make some last-minute request—ask her exactly how Finch escaped, or warn her not to tell Finch what he was like in the warehouse, not to mention the video on the laptop, playing its painful loop.

But Reese stays silent.

"You could at least say thanks," Carter mutters, but under her breath and after the door is mostly closed, so he probably doesn't hear her anyway.

 

* * *

 

Fusco is willing to stay, but Carter sends him home. She's more rested than him after her day off and less bruised, and besides she wouldn't be able to sleep anyway. Too much on her mind.

She does drag a chair over from the nurse's station, takes a seat in the corridor next to the door. She calls Taylor to say she won't be home for dinner, wishes him good night. She eats instant noodles from a vending machine and tries to find a comfortable position in the plastic chair. Her shoulders are still aching. _Getting old, Joss._

The nurses come by on rounds a couple of times. Carter shoos the first one off with her badge. The second's a head nurse, not as easily deterred, but Carter knocks twice on the door when she sees the woman coming, and when the nurse enters Finch's room nothing's amiss and Reese is nowhere in sight. Carter doesn't even bother wondering how he managed that in a room with no windows or extra beds.

A little before midnight the door opens and Reese steps halfway out. He's not exactly smiling but he looks—not calmer, but more real, like he's remembered how to make expressions like a normal human being. "Finch's awake," he says. "He wants to talk to you."

"Me?" Carter says, and lets Reese conduct her through the door.

Finch is sitting up in the bed, propped up by pillows and looking stiff and uncomfortable and exhausted. He's got a pair of glasses, not his usual thick rims but delicate wireframes that make him look more like a librarian than an IRS accountant. His eyes behind the lenses are bloodshot and puffy but his gaze is clear. He looks like himself, even bare-armed in the hospital gown, and Carter is more relieved to see that than she thought she'd be. 

"Detective Carter," Finch greets, and smiles at her, a tentative, almost shy expression. It's oddly sweet and she wonders if it's because of pain meds or the concussion, or maybe just fatigue lowering his guard.

She smiles back, not too broadly, and keeps her voice low, like she's trying not to spook a frightened animal. "Hey, how you doing?"

"I've been better," Finch says, then with a wry twist of his mouth admits, "but I've been far worse off, too."

He wasn't born with the limp, Carter thinks, a passing thought that stops her short when she realizes he meant her to come to that conclusion. That he handed it to her, free and unasked, and that shouldn't feel as meaningful, as generous, as it does.

Finch is watching her closely, evaluating whether she received his gift; when she meets his eyes he nods, slightly but enough. "Mr. Reese told me what you did, Detective," he says. "How you found him at the warehouse and had our targets arrested."

Carter's surprised, but only marginally. She glances back at Reese, standing with elaborately non-threatening casualness behind her, but his composed expression predictably gives away nothing. Finch's is no better, though; she can't tell if his cordiality is because Reese told him the true story or made something up. "John had the situation pretty much under control by the time I got there," she says cautiously. "I just had to cuff them and call it in."

Finch's lips quirk again. "Mr. Reese's version of events was a bit more comprehensive," he says, with a hint of reproach that she's not sure is meant for her or for Reese.

Carter shrugs. Hours later and her shoulders are still stiff. "It was nothing; just doing my job. Like you asked me to do."

"I asked you," Finch says, "but it was not your job. And it wasn't nothing—far from." His eyes skim past her, to Reese behind her, then return to meet hers. "I know we call on you often, Detective. I hope you know that we wouldn't if our options weren't so limited, but..."

"But they are," Carter says. "And there are lives to save. I get it. I'm a cop; I'd rather you called on me than lose people I'm supposed to be protecting."

"Yes." Finch hesitates, his gaze flicking back to Reese. "But this was...something different."

"Not from where I'm standing," Carter says. "You sent me to save someone—I saved him."

Finch blinks. Carter wants to glance behind herself, see what Reese's face looks like. She doesn't quite dare, though. And it probably wouldn't tell her anything anyway. "And I'd do it again," she says, to make it clear, because for all his watching it seems like maybe Finch didn't see this after all.

She could tell him why, if he asked—all the different reasons; it's not only because it's her duty, or because she felt guilty, or even because John's important, necessary, to their rescue operations. It's certainly not because she owes him anything—owes either of them anything.

If Finch asked, she could say that they owe her—both of them, because what she did was as much for Finch as for Reese, as much for Reese as for Finch. Or maybe that's one and the same anyway. Without Reese Finch falls and Reese falls without Finch; save one to save the other. _Two birds with one stone,_ and Carter has to suppress a private and only slightly hysterical giggle.

But Finch doesn't ask anything. He just arches an eyebrow at her, almost as if he can read her last thought; then he says simply, "Thank you, Detective Carter."

Save one to save the other, and then they can save the world. Even if that's not her only reason—it's the one they'd best understand, she thinks.

She's going to walk out of this room and go home to sleep, and when she stops by tomorrow morning this room will be empty. Most likely there won't be any records that there was any patient staying here at all, or that a Harold Cox was ever admitted to this hospital.

And sometime tomorrow, or a couple days later, maybe a week if she's lucky, she's going to get a call, or a man in a suit is going to turn up at one of her crime scenes, and she's going to sigh and ask _"What do you want?"_ and she's going to do it. Even if it's dancing on the edge of legality, even if it's something she wouldn't have dreamed of doing a year ago. Because it'll be the right thing to do; because it's what she wants to do. Because she is who she is, as much as any of them, and she wouldn't change that, even if she could.

"You're welcome," Carter says.


End file.
